News
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Wayward Moods: Bipolar kids travel tough road to teenhood
Children diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a psychiatric ailment characterized by severe mood swings, exhibit a depressingly poor response to standard drug treatments and psychotherapy.
By Bruce Bower -
Planetary Science
Odyssey’s Homer: Hints of water near both poles of Mars
Sensors on board the Mars Odyssey spacecraft have spied strong signs of ice buried near both poles of the Red Planet, exactly the regions where scientists previously had said that such frozen water deposits could exist.
By Sid Perkins -
Health & Medicine
Dieting woes tied to hunger hormone
A rise in the appetite-enhancing hormone ghrelin after weight loss may explain why dieters regain pounds.
By John Travis -
Health & Medicine
Arthritis drug fights Crohn’s disease
The inflammation-fighting drug infliximab can hold off the painful symptoms of Crohn's disease for as long as a year in many patients.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Operation overload: Kids’ backpacks
Sixth-graders in Italy routinely carry school backpacks that equal, on average, 22 percent of their body weight, a finding researchers link to an earlier report that more than 60 percent of children in this age group had experienced low-back pain more than once.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Hysterectomy often improves sex life
A study of more than 1,000 women who had hysterectomies finds that after the operation, women generally wanted and had sex more often, were more likely to reach orgasm, experienced less vaginal dryness, and were less likely to have pain during sex than was the case before surgery.
By Nathan Seppa -
Materials Science
Tiny gems on steps find future in films
The discovery of diamond-crystal seeds on steps in silicon may lead to long-sought, large wafers of pure, single-crystal diamond for electronics and other uses.
By Peter Weiss -
The moon also rises—and assumes new sizes
The perplexing human tendency to perceive a moon on the horizon as larger than an elevated moon may arise from visual cues indicating that the horizon moon is located much farther away.
By Bruce Bower -
Health & Medicine
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis
The chemical glutamate can overwhelm nervous-system cells called oligodendrocytes, adding to the nerve damage caused by wayward immune cells in multiple sclerosis.
By Nathan Seppa -
Physics
Electrical superball pulls itself together
A strong electric field can drive tiny particles of a superconductor to bind themselves together into a remarkably sturdy ball.
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Blood cues sex choice for parasites
Malaria parasites shift their female-biased production of offspring toward a more evenly balanced sex ratio as an infection proceeds.
By John Travis -
Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.